


While There Is Breath

by inexplicifics



Series: Silver and Steel [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-22 00:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Geralt almost dies, and recovering comes with some surprises.
Relationships: Eskel & Original Female Character(s), Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Silver and Steel [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614712
Comments: 7
Kudos: 234





	While There Is Breath

Geralt wakes up, which is something of a surprise: the last thing he remembers, quite vividly, is being disemboweled, and as far as he knows, that’s outside even witcher healing capabilities. He’s lying on something soft, and he hurts like hell but _not_ like he’s dying, and feels weak as a kitten but...healing. He’ll be back on his feet in a week at most, if he’s any judge.

Also, someone is lying beside him with their arm across his chest. He takes a deep breath, and smells lavender and sage and worry so strong it almost drowns everything else out, sword oil and silver and steel and home - somehow, he’s in his own bed, in Kaer Morhen, and it’s either Amaranth or Eskel beside him.

He opens his eyes.

It’s Amaranth next to him, and she looks _terrible_. Her skin has a dreadful grey tone to it; her cheeks are sunken, her hair sweat-matted, and her lips cracked. Her eyes are closed, she’s breathing very shallowly, and he can’t tell if she’s asleep or unconscious...but her arm across his chest is holding him tightly, as though she cannot bear to let go.

Geralt makes a noise, and across the room Eskel starts to his feet out of a chair and comes over to the bed almost at a run. “Geralt, you _bastard_ ,” he says hoarsely. “Fuck, you’re awake.” He helps Geralt lift his head and holds a mug to his lips, and Geralt sips carefully at cold clean water. It tastes amazing. Geralt drains the mug in careful sips.

“Wha’ happen’?” he asks as Eskel lowers his head back to the pillow.

“Fuck if I know,” Eskel says, sitting down on the side of the bed. “Amaranth portaled into the dining hall four days ago with her arms wrapped around you, and your guts spilling out everywhere in pieces. Vesemir and I figured you were dead, but she -” He pauses and drags a hand over his face. “She said, ‘There is yet breath within me,’ and started _glowing_ , and you...started healing. _Fast_. And then she went grey and keeled over, but she wouldn’t let go of you, and you were _still_ healing fast enough to _see_ , so we moved you both up here.”

Geralt swallows hard. “She alright?”

“We can’t tell,” Eskel says. _He_ looks terrible, too; not like Amaranth does, but like he’s been awake for four days running, and worried sick for all of them. “She’ll drink if we hold a cup to her lips, but she hasn’t woken up or let go of you since she keeled over.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Eskel says.

Geralt pats the arm across his chest gently. “Amaranth,” he says, and tries hard to _feel_ at her: worry and adoration in equal measure. “Amaranth, wake up; I’m healed. _Amaranth_.”

Slowly, her eyes open. They are hazy and dull, like all the color has leeched out of them, but as they focus on Geralt’s face she smiles. “Geralt,” she says softly, like a prayer, and then the strength seems to go out of her all at once, and her arm goes limp, and her eyes close again as she sags against the bed, still as death.

“Fuck!” Geralt says, and Eskel lunges over him to press his fingers against Amaranth’s throat. Geralt can hear her heartbeat, faint and slow as a witcher’s but still steady, and after a moment Eskel sits back.

“I need a stronger word than _fuck_ ,” he says hoarsely. “Fucker. Fuck _est_.” And then, as Geralt tries to lever himself up to a sitting position, “Oh no, you bastard, don’t you dare move. You were _this close_ to being _dead_ four days ago, I’m not letting you rupture something _now_. Hold still and I’ll go get Vesemir and some broth, or something.”

Geralt stops trying to sit up rather gratefully. Moving makes his entire torso hurt like hell.

Vesemir looks him over and decrees that he’s not to even try sitting up for another two days, looks Amaranth over and shrugs in bafflement, and then demands to know what happened.

“Higher vampire,” Geralt says. “Orphanage. Faster than I expected.” Faster than he’d thought it _could_ be, and he’s not going to make that mistake twice. “Blacked out.”

“Guess we’ll have to ask Amaranth about the rest of it when she wakes up,” Vesemir says, glancing over at her still form. “Amaranth the Undying still alive, huh.”

“Just Amaranth,” Geralt and Eskel say in perfect unison.

“ _Huh_ ,” Vesemir says, but he drops the subject, at least for now.

Amaranth sleeps for two full days. She can be roused enough to drink if a cup is held to her lips, and to use the chamberpot if Eskel holds her up, but otherwise she lies like one dead, limp and still, breathing shallowly, heart beating as slowly as a witcher’s. Her eyes, when she opens them at all, are still hazy and dull; she does not speak or try to move. It’s frankly horrifying: Amaranth has always been so vibrantly alive, seeing her like this is like a sort of terrible nightmare. Geralt, stuck in bed and gritting his teeth through the continued healing of his guts, can’t even do anything to help Eskel as he cares for them both; the only useful thing he _can_ do is be a pillow, as Amaranth seems to sleep easier when she’s touching Geralt. He ends up cradling her against him, her head on his shoulder, listening to her slow heartbeat and breathing in the fading scent of lavender and sage, as Eskel paces from window to bed and back again like a caged wolf.

She finally moves late in the evening on the second full day since Geralt woke up. It isn’t much, just a slight flutter of her eyelids, but her heartbeat and breathing both speed up. Geralt wakes from his half-doze and Eskel comes to a shaking halt at the side of the bed, and they both stare at her in dawning hope as she slowly, slowly rouses.

“Ow,” is the first thing she says, in a soft and startled tone.

“What hurts?” Eskel demands. “Where are you hurt, packmate?”

Amaranth opens her eyes - clear again, lacking that hazed dullness at last - and smiles a little crookedly. “Everywhere,” she says, and sits up very slowly, arm shaking as she levers herself up. “Oh, _ow_ , I haven’t drained myself that badly since _training_.” She looks Geralt over, and her smile widens. “You look better.”

“You almost _died_ ,” Eskel chokes out. “You _both_ almost died.”

Amaranth grimaces. “I made a promise,” she says, and licks her lips. “Water?”

Eskel gets her a mug, and has to help her drink it - her hands are too weak to grip. Geralt watches her almost hungrily, reveling in the sight of her _awake_ , no longer a limp grey heap of limbs tucked against him, beginning to get some color back in her cheeks already.

Eskel takes the mug away when she has drained it, and Amaranth sways a little where she sits and looks down at Geralt again. Very carefully, she brushes a lock of his hair back, traces her fingers over his cheekbone. “While there is breath within me,” she murmurs.

Then, very slowly, she folds down to rest against him again, and slips back into sleep; but her heartbeat is as fast as it ought to be, and her breathing deep and even.

“Fuck,” Eskel says quietly. “I didn’t think - when she made that promise, I didn’t _know_ -”

“Neither did I,” Geralt says. He shakes his head and settles Amaranth a little more comfortably against him. “She told me love was dangerous for sorceresses.”

“Guess so,” Eskel says. He runs a hand gently over Amaranth’s filthy hair, brushes the backs of his fingers against Geralt’s cheek. “She’ll want a bath when she wakes up, I bet.”

Geralt nods. Amaranth can deal with the necessary dirt of camping, but she far prefers being clean, and with a few notable exceptions usually involving bad weather and worse luck, he’s never seen her this dirty. She’s still got some of his blood smeared in her hair, where Eskel’s wet cloths didn’t quite get it out. “Bath and food,” he says. “For me, too.”

“Stick you both in the tub, you can keep her from drowning,” Eskel says. “Guess I’m heating the water this time.”

“Yep,” Geralt says, grinning. Eskel shakes his head, sighs, and leans down and kisses him.

“Bastard,” he says fondly. “Don’t you get gutted again.”

“Didn’t mean to this time,” Geralt says.

Eskel heats a tub of water when Amaranth finally opens her eyes again, and helps first Geralt and then Amaranth into it. They’re both moving gingerly, and end up helping each other wash because it’s easier than washing themselves, while Eskel provides more buckets of hot water and points out any spots they’ve missed. Once they’re clean, Eskel helps them both back to bed - Geralt tries hard not to get too irritated at his own continuing weakness - and props them up with pillows, and flops down on his back next to Geralt, looking utterly exhausted. Geralt holds Amaranth close, her head cradled on his shoulder, and says, “You shouldn’t have risked your life like that.”

“Why not?” Amaranth asks.

“I’m a witcher,” Geralt says, trying hard to put the innate _wrongness_ of the whole situation into words. “People aren’t supposed to die for _me_.”

“It’s my life to spend,” Amaranth says quietly, and then her lips quirk in a tiny, humorless smile. “And I assure you, it was an entirely selfish decision on my part.”

“What?” That makes no _sense_.

“You know I can feel what other people feel about me.” Geralt nods. “You love me. It’s as clear - as clear as your golden eyes.” Amaranth sighs. “I know I _could_ do it, because I did before I met you, but I do not _want_ to live in a world where Geralt of Rivia is not alive to look at me with his golden eyes and _love_ me.”

Geralt considers that in silence for a long time. It’s...well, if he could feel fear, it would be terrifying. As it is, he just doesn’t know what to _do_ with it. His own continued existence has never been _necessary_ to anyone before.

He’s quiet for so long - and she’s still so drained - that she falls asleep, breathing deep and even against his shoulder. Geralt looks down at Eskel in bafflement. “What the _fuck_ do I do with that?” he asks quietly.

“Try real hard not to get gutted again, I guess,” Eskel says.

Geralt has a horrid thought. “ _You_ wouldn’t do something stupid if I died,” he says, not making it a question because if it’s a question then Eskel might _disagree_.

“I’m a witcher,” Eskel says. “We don’t die of grief. I’d keep on taking contracts, same as ever.” He reaches over to take Geralt’s free hand and laces their fingers together tightly. “Can’t say I’d like it much, though.”

Geralt hums, and holds tight to Eskel’s hand. Eskel slides into sleep between one breath and the next, and Geralt lies there looking at the ceiling, holding on to both of his lovers, and wondering how the _fuck_ he’s going to -

To guarantee he won’t die doing the job he’s been raised and trained and _made_ to do.

Self-preservation is another name for fear of death, and fear is burnt out of witchers in the Trial of the Grasses. Geralt doesn’t fear his own death; he’s looked it in the eyes a hundred times by now, and knows it as well as he knows his shadow. For his own sake, he wouldn’t bother trying to change three hundred years of tradition, trying to invent new ways of killing monsters when the old ways work perfectly well, and Geralt is _good_ at the old ways.

He’s always been stronger, faster, sturdier than any other witcher in the Wolf School, maybe in the world. Not that there are many witchers _left_ in the world these days. Thankfully, the number of monsters is dwindling, too, though not fast enough.

But if he wants to never again see Amaranth grey with magical drain, never again smell worry overwhelming silver and steel and _home_ in Eskel’s familiar scent, it’s not enough to just be stronger and faster and sturdier. He’s going to have to start being _smarter_ \- if not than other witchers, than at least smarter than the things he’s trying to kill.

Witchers have been hunting monsters the same ways since the first witchers were created. But the world is changing, and there aren’t enough witchers anymore.

He’s got a whole winter in Kaer Morhen ahead of him, and Eskel and Vesemir and Amaranth to bounce ideas off of. Maybe by the time he goes back out on the Path in the spring, they’ll have managed to come up with some new ways to hunt.

Geralt doesn’t fear his _own_ death, but he’d do harder things than invent new hunting techniques to keep Eskel from ever looking so bleak and miserable again. To prevent Amaranth from killing herself, willingly, to keep Geralt himself alive. He can’t stop being a witcher - probably wouldn’t even if he _could_ \- but he can do this much.

“I’ll try,” he promises his sleeping lovers, the still air of this room that has been his home for decades now. “I’ll try my best to stay alive.”

**Author's Note:**

> Still haven't interacted with the canon, still have no idea why these plotbunnies are so insistent.
> 
> This one's set some years after the pogrom, so a lot of the Wolf School witchers are no longer around, and there are no trainees.
> 
> No beta on this one.


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